• voluble@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    By proclaiming Newton is wrong, it leads to people concluding that all science is wrong, because there is always someone working on the next iteration

    I’ve never had sympathy for this line of thinking. Is the average person truly too ignorant to understand that science is a constantly developing process of better understanding our universe, not some set of unimpeachable rules carved into stone tablets once and forever? The fact that science can be updated, changed, revolutionized, is what makes it powerful.

    If people need to be ‘protected’ from that fact, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way science is taught in schools. I can’t accept that the average person can’t comprehend such a simple idea that would take less than an hour to convincingly communicate.

    • yarr@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      I’ve never had sympathy for this line of thinking. Is the average person truly too ignorant to understand that science is a constantly developing process of better understanding our universe, not some set of unimpeachable rules carved into stone tablets once and forever?

      YES because often times the opposing model is the Bible, which is updated very irregularly and people will form sects over a single differing interpretation of a single passage.

      Changing your mind / learning new information can be construed as the super-hated “flip-flop”.

      Unfortunately, the illogical are immune to logic. No amount of it will be effective.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        all it took to convince them evolution is completely wrong is a couple paragraphs about Lamarck and giraffes and Haeckel and embryos

        That’s incredibly shocking and concerning.

    • Lath@kbin.earth
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      8 months ago

      Yes, the average person is ignorant of stuff that need to be updated once in a while. There is something wrong with the current form of education. And you need to accept that understanding doesn’t come easy.

      If you can’t do that last part, well, there you go. Same thing for the average person.

    • kurwa@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It’s less that Newton is wrong and more like it’s an approximation. Things always get more complicated because we are learning more about everything all the time, but for simple day to day things Newton is fine to be used and even taught.

      You could also say it’s important from a historical perspective, learning how we got from Newton to bigger and better things is important too.